Chapter 3
Aiden
That woman would be the death of me.
“Fucking Four,” I muttered to myself as I descended back into the belly of the ship.
I’d followed Kiera out of the infirmary to demand answers, desperate to know if she’d really given us up under duress, trying to save Maz.
But then I’d heard her ordering Skelly to bring us to Calimber. She knew nothing of what awaited us there, except perhaps Dracles’s most elite soldiers.
It seems neither of us cares who we harm to achieve our goals, little traitor.
Yet here I was again, letting her lead me into danger on the chance we could discover something that would obliterate Renwell, Rellmira’s newest false king.
I laid a palm on the infirmary door, glancing at the finger my father’s falcon ring had encircled. The insignia of the last true king. I’d torn it off after we sailed into the open sea and shoved it into my pocket.
I had no right to wear it.
Taking a deep breath, I pushed open the infirmary door.
“Where is she?” Sigrid snarled the moment I stepped inside.
Nikella hadn’t followed me back, leaving me alone to face the small, angry mob. But I supposed I deserved it. I’d been putting off these inquiries for days.
And now I was also going to tell them I was delaying our trip home to take yet another risk.
I leaned against the healer’s table and folded my arms over my chest. The stab wound I’d sustained from that gods-damned coward, Weylin, twinged, but I ignored it. “Kiera’s on deck with Skelly.”
“Why did you bring her with us?” Sigrid demanded.
“How did one of Weylin’s daughters end up in your company?” one of the injured bone-rattlers asked.
More and more questions hurtled from every corner of the room. Except from Maz, who stayed turned away.
“Did she know who you really were?”
“Is she still in league with Renwell?”
“What exactly happened in the palace two nights ago?”
“We should put her in chains and give her a taste of Dag justice.” That last one was from Sigrid, of course.
“Enough!” I snapped. “You forget that she also helped us escape the Den. If it hadn’t been for her quick thinking, we might have perished under that second wave of Wolves.”
Sigrid twirled her blade in her hand. “There might not have been a second wave if she hadn’t told Renwell what day we’d be attacking.”
“She didn’t tell him how many warriors we had or where we planned to attack. Only that I aimed to kill Weylin and what day I would do it.”
“Why didn’t she just kill you if she wanted to protect her family?” Yarina asked, her blue eyes thoughtful, as if this were the route she would’ve taken.
I scowled. “I don’t know. Perhaps she was worried she wouldn’t make it back to the palace alive if she tried.”
“Or she didn’t want to kill the man she loved,” Maz mumbled into his pillow.
A shocked silence fell.
A memory flared of me bursting into Melaena’s room at The Silk Dancer after I’d found out Kiera had been spying on us. My normally level-headed friend and business associate had shouted, “She loves you!”
My heart hardened. “She was never in love with me, Mazkull. Why are you making excuses for her?”
Before anyone could stop him, Maz rose from his cot, his head nearly brushing the roof. His blue eyes blazed. “Why aren’t you? Have you asked her any of these questions, or did you immediately condemn her and cast her out of your heart?”
“Sit down, Mazkull,” I ground out, taking a step toward him.
“No.”
His sisters crowded closer. “Sit down, or we’ll make you,” Yarina threatened.
He glared down at her. “You would force me to tear my back in a fight you would lose? Your choice, little sister.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose, a headache brewing behind my eyes. “What will it take, Maz?”
Maz interrupted his three-way scowling contest to glance at me. “Answers. Start from the beginning and tell us what you know.”
I’d rather swim to Yargoth, but they deserved some truth. I nodded, and Maz sat on his cot. Everyone else settled in as well.
I told them of how I met Kiera and her offer of escape. I mentioned her saving Ruru from the Shadow-Wolves and her role in the heist. That seemed to garner some reluctant approval from my audience.
My story clearly had holes in it—gaps where I could only surmise what she’d done at the behest of Renwell . . . and why.
But then I reached the part of the story after the heist.
My voice roughened as I revealed how she’d been eavesdropping on me and Melaena, discovering my identity and purpose. How she’d convinced me she was on our side, that she hated her father as well.
I told them about the task I’d given her and Ruru and that I’d kept the bulk of our infiltration plans to myself.
“Only smart thing you did,” Sigrid muttered.
I glared at her, continuing to when Kiera helped two fugitives, Helene and Isabel, escape Renwell’s clutches.
More sympathetic murmurs echoed around the room.
“He took me that night,” Maz jumped in. “Saying he learned about my involvement in the heist after interrogating the servants at Asher’s mansion.”
Yarina’s eyes narrowed. “Not from Kiera? Er, Emilia? Or whatever her gods-damned name is.”
Maz shook his head.
“Renwell could’ve been covering for her,” Sigrid said.
“But then, why take Maz at all?” I asked. “It was a risky, desperate move. Something else was going on between Kiera and her master.”
“Yes, that must be it,” Maz said, relief heavy in his voice. “You didn’t hear the way she was screaming at him. It was like Korvin took that gods-damned knife to her soul instead of . . . me.” He swallowed hard and looked away.
We’d spoken little of it, but I’d given Maz dreamdew drops several times when the nightmares became too much. He’d torn his back yesterday, thrashing in his sleep.
Watching him suffer that way . . . I might’ve done the same thing Kiera had. Or I would’ve killed both Renwell and Korvin with my bare hands, regardless of the consequences.
I couldn’t imagine what that must’ve been like to watch. Especially since Korvin was the one who’d scarred Kiera’s back so deeply years ago.
For a moment, I was back in that warm, steamy bathhouse, holding Kiera’s trembling body in my arms as she relived the terrible memory. Her fingers had dug into my bare skin as if I were a rock in a stormy sea.
I’d surrendered another small piece of myself to her then. Had she even wanted it? Or was it all part of her ploy to gain my trust?
“When did you find out who she was?” Maz asked.
Inwardly, I winced. “After you left for the ship. She . . . she revealed herself. Then Nikella shot her with a sleeping dart, and we tied her up in a room.”
Gods, I would never shake the absolute horror I’d felt when she’d drawn that gold-hilted sunstone knife from her boot. Everything it meant had slammed into me all at once. I’d barely registered the fact that she was trying to tell me what she’d done before I revealed my own crime.
Then she’d leaped at me with that wretched knife, murder in her beautiful eyes.
Maz’s eyes narrowed as if he knew there was more I wasn’t telling. “Why did she reveal herself, I wonder?”
“Probably trying to save her precious father,” Sigrid muttered.
I pressed my lips together. Kiera had stood between me and Weylin, more out of rage than loyalty. But then she’d learned his part in Brielle’s death.
Yarina gestured impatiently. “Get to the part where Weylin dies. How did Kiera get inside the palace? And why didn’t she stay with Renwell?”
“The first, I’m guessing she had help from Ruru.”
Maz nodded, his face softening with fondness.
I continued, “She was also Weylin’s daughter and Renwell’s apprentice, so I’m sure that counted for something.
As for your second question . . .” I ran my hands through my hair, reliving each heart-pounding moment.
“After Renwell beheaded Weylin and took his crown, Kiera discovered the depth of his betrayal and tried to kill him.”
A murmur of surprise and approval rippled through the room.
I couldn’t help but agree.
My jaw had unhinged with the speed and accuracy of Kiera’s flying knives. I’d hoped that at least one would find its mark, but that hope shattered along with her blades under Renwell’s sunstone sword.
“So she took her chances with you instead of him,” Sigrid summed up flatly.
“I didn’t give her a choice.” And she hates me for it.
Her rage on deck had felt like a wildfire that wanted to consume me, turn me to ash. But she was alive and away from Renwell. I refused to apologize for that. It was more than I’d been able to do for her mother.
I cleared my throat. “She wanted to stay for her brother and sister, but there was no way to free them.”
“Ah, poor lovely,” Maz murmured, stroking his beard.
“If she’d told the truth sooner, we might’ve been able to get them out,” I snapped.
He shook his head. “You’re trying so hard to justify the pain you feel that you’re smothering hers. There’s enough pain to go around, brother.”
My chest tightened, darkness clawing from within.
I didn’t want to hear about her pain. I didn’t want to think of how I’d caused a large portion of it. I didn’t want everything to be my fault, as it usually was.
Fucking Four.
Moments like this, I felt as though I were still imprisoned in the bowels of the mine with nothing but my guilt for company.
Gods-damned Calimber. Had I ever really escaped?
I cleared my throat. “I’ve ordered Skelly to change course.” The Dags in the room tensed. “Not far out of the way. Just to Calimber.”
Maz rose to his feet once more, but no one lifted a finger to stop him. “What in the deep, dark, wandering hell do you want with that place?”
I told them what Kiera had told me to very mixed reactions. Maz and Yarina were all for it until Maz declared he wanted to scout the place himself. Then he was shouted down by every Dag in the room.
Sigrid protested, citing every reason it was a terrible idea—many of which involved Kiera. Davka, as usual, said little, but her locked jaw conveyed her disapproval.
The bone-rattler whose bandaged head I’d just checked shrugged and told me to take Roark and Bardo for my rowers, as they were strongest.
Stavrik, the hulking Dag, glared at his heavily bandaged hands, then told me to take his bow and arrows. “That quiver had better be empty when you come back,” he muttered.
I nodded. I didn’t know what we were going to face on those cliffs, but a bow and arrows could only help.
“A moment, Aiden?” Maz asked, tipping his head toward the door.
We sidestepped Yarina arguing with her older sisters and slipped into the hallway.
Maz moved gingerly, but I didn’t reach out to help him, as that would likely result in a hearty shove.
A flickering lantern swung into his head, and he swore. “Gods-damned ship is too small.” He folded his arms over his chest, flinched, and let them fall to his sides. “I want to destroy Renwell as much as you do. But don’t go running into danger just because you hate to lose.”
I sighed, rubbing my fingers over my unshaven jaw. “Sometimes I hate how well you know me, Mazkull.”
His familiar grin flared briefly. “You shouldn’t. It helps me keep you alive.”
“You’re only warning me away from Calimber now because your sisters refuse to let you scout it with me.”
He smirked. “I guess we both understand each other, brother.”
I shook my head. “Renwell’s coup was too calculated, too well-planned, to be contained to just Aquinon. From what it sounds like, he already had Dracles and the army in hand before he killed Weylin. I want to know what else he’s been working on in the shadows.”
Maz quirked an eyebrow. “Planning a coup of your own, are you?”
A bitter laugh escaped me. “With my one-man army, yes.”
“Two-man army.” Maz thumped his chest. “Like I told you in that gods-damned mine, I’m with you to the bloody end.”
Two men—and probably Nikella—against Renwell and an entire army.
They were the odds I’d grown used to over the years, but now they felt insurmountable.
After we’d returned what was left of the Dags to their clan and I’d sent Skelly back to Eloren to be with his family, my list of allies grew too short.
“So what weren’t you saying in there about Kiera?” Maz asked abruptly, shaking me from my thoughts. “Does it have anything to do with why she looked ready to gut you earlier?”
“She found out what I did to Brielle. Her mother,” I murmured.
Maz’s face paled under his golden beard.
“Holy Four, I hadn’t pieced that together.
I was so focused on what happened with her bastard father and Renwell .
. . Gods help you, brother. You two have made quite the mess of things.
” He scratched at his hairy, tattooed chest. “But you told her what happened, right? She understands why you did it?”
I scuffed my boot at a cracked floorboard. “Not all of it, no.”
“Well, what are you bloody waiting for, idiot?” He gave me a light shove toward the stairs. “Give the woman some peace.”
I whirled on him, batting his arm away. “Peace?” I snarled.
“And what peace do you think she wants from me, the man who stabbed her mother in the heart with the knife she still carries? What words will ease that pain, Mazkull? She can’t even look at me without thinking I’m the reason her mother is dead, why she’s left her brother and sister behind.
She said she will never forgive me.” I curled my fingers into fists.
Gods, how I longed to smash them through something, preferably Renwell’s smug face.
“And how can I forgive her?” I breathed.
“That little thief stole my vengeance, my purpose, my secrets, my trust, my—”
“Heart?” Maz interrupted.
My insides went cold. “Enough. We are never speaking of this again. Get some rest.”
I turned on my boot heel and stormed away before he could respond.
Suddenly, a dark and dangerous boat ride to the most wretched place I knew sounded like just the escape I needed because it took me away from her.